extensions becoming routine

By Tengku Razaleigh

Of late there has been a tendency for the Government to routinely extend and re-extend the service of top civil servants scheduled for retirement.

Extension of service is meant be an extraordinary measure. It is in danger of becoming the norm. This is bad practice.

1. It politicizes the leadership of a service that has its own processes and criteria for promotion. Those extended become, in effect, political appointees with rather cosy relations with the political bosses who determine these extensions.
2. Public servants owe their allegiance to King and country, not to politicians. It is by an accumulation of bad practices like this that the once independent ethos of the civil service has been eroded.
3. It is highly disruptive in a system that promotes by seniority. Promotions are log-jammed all the way down the line. People are not developed on schedule, and their pay and prospects are retarded. Those near retirement lose out on seniority and the pension that they would otherwise have retired with. An extension for one favoured official means a promotion freeze, with all the career frustration this entails, for hundreds of others down the line.
4. It contradicts our talk of developing talent. It cannot be that no replacement good enough could be found from among the swollen ranks awaiting promotion.
5. We are on our way to creating cults of personality in a service that used to pride itself on impersonal professionalism. Feudal expectations of indefinite incumbency, justified by manufactured media approval, are being imported from the Executive into the civil service. There is a reason why bureaucrats are rotated regularly. Since Ancient China people have understood that officials too long incumbent are tempted to carve out empires for themselves.